100th Post and a stitchy giveaway

Hello there!
Wow, 100 posts.  (I missed my blogoversary... doh!).  This was never really meant to be purely a stitching blog, and so I'll get back to the other things at time to time like music and travel and such like.

However, for my 100th post, and to say hello to my new followers and thank you all for inspiring me with your stitchy posts, I thought I'd do a little giveaway of a chart that I very much enjoyed stitching, it was one of my favourites.  It is this, the Iris pattern with black border and it is a Jane Dewberry design, bought from her little stall in Buxton I think it was a long time ago!  The one that I stitched is now hanging in my Auntie's room and looks beautiful in a stylish black frame, but I will not be stitching it again, so I thought someone else might like the original chart.  (note: I'm not sure exactly how much of each colour was needed as it isn't specified in the pack, but there are 16 colours in the chart)

To enter to get the chart and maybe a couple of little extras, here are the rules:
1. You must be a follower of my blog.
2. Please leave a comment on this post if you would like to enter the giveaway.
3. If you post about the giveaway on your blog, you will get an extra entry into the draw (yes... I am also looking for new followers, I'm hoping this will be a good way to do it!) ... let me know in your comment if you have done this.

I will pick the winner on the evening of Sunday 22nd January, 8pm GMT.

Thanks for looking :) I'll be back with an update on Cottage 2 sometime during the week as it's almost finished!

Goodies!

Today has been a great day... I got two things in the post.  One I can't quite show yet as I won it in a facebook competition and it's going to be given away as a present to a lovely little boy I know.

The other post was the fabulous RAK sent to me by Marlene, which I'm going to show you here... The Halloween book (I think the bunting and the baking related things look fabulous, I'd like to try them), the Lizzie*Kate sampler, some beautiful Oatmeal 18ct fabric, some waste canvas (which I've never used so that'll be interesting!) and a lovely cotton bag to stitch on with it!  Thank you so so much Marlene, I'm going to have a lovely time and be kept very busy, I can see that now :)

Here's a little piccie!

Cottage 2 update

I have to say I am very happy with my progress on Cottage 2 over the last week or so.  

For quite a while I was a bit worried.  Because I inherited this project half completed by my grandma and with a massive bag of thread for the various projects she has worked on, I was kind of relying on her thread markups in relation to the pattern.  One in particular was worrying me because it was a really bright green, and I wasn't so sure that it fit with everything else.  Now I'm a bit further along I'm much happier with it.

I'm less happy about the instructions that came with it.  It's a chart that's about 15 years old.  The photo of the completed item is blurry, black and white and back to front, which isn't really helping.  The instructions for the backstitch are a little confusing, since I'm meant to identify cabbages and rhubarb leaves to stitch in particular colours and I'm assuming when they say left it's my right and vice versa because the photo is backwards.  So that is a little frustrating, but I'm getting close to the end of the cross stitch now, yippee!

Here's the progress over the last week (apologies for the blurryness, I just couldn't get one that wasn't blurry!):

Progress 3rd January 2012

Progress 9th January 2012

As always, thanks for taking a look!

Stretch Goals

My previous company was very fond of setting Stretch Goals when it came to appraisal time - that is goals that would challenge what you already knew and stretch you further out of your comfort zone.

With this in mind and having joined a number of new stitchy blogs over the past couple of days, here is a list of the goals I'd like to accomplish for this year, stitchy wise, in no particular order (and more than one objective can be covered by the same item):

1. Start and persevere with a HAED project.
2. Start and complete a project on evenweave or linen.
3. Stitch a beautiful sampler... I think the long, thin ones on light browny backgrounds look stunning.
4. Make something for halloween so that I have something to do up my flat with
5. Start a Lizzie*Kate design... they are so pretty and I have none in my stash!

I think 5 is enough for now.

Incidentally, I find that seeing everyone else's work on their blogs really spurs me on, so thank you!

Cat Above the Rest

Ove the Christmas period, on trains and whilst visiting family, I managed to complete Cat Above the Rest.  It is part of a pair, but I put the other one 'Somewhere Safe' and I have no idea where that might have been, so it might be a little while until I pick it up and start on the second one.  I think these were free with one of the magazine subscriptions that I started up at one of the stitching shows, so they must be at least 5 years old, probably more than that!

He needs a little bit of an iron but I couldn't wait to show him off. I'm not really much of a cat person, but I think he's pretty cute!

TUSAL 2012

I'd seen this on a few of the Cross Stitching blogs I follow without really knowing what it was but just seeing jars full of brightly coloured threads. I finally found the source... Yay!  I guess it's not of much interest to anyone who doesn't stitch, but the TUSAL stands for Totally Useless Stitch-A-Long.  It is presided over by Daffycat and the full details are here:

http://itsdaffycat.blogspot.com/2011/11/totally-useless-stitch-long.html

But basically, it involves storing up my stitching thread offcuts in a little jar and then posting up a photo around the time of each new moon.  For 2012, these are:

January 23
February 21
March 22
April 21
May 20
June 19
July 19
August 17
September 16
October 15
November 13
December 13

There is no real point to it, but just for fun I've decided to join in this year.  I bought a little jar, which my husband then stole and filled with cashew nuts, so I'll be eating my way through those and then stealing it back! There are currently over 270 bloggers signed up for this, so I look forward to seeing everyone's brightly coloured jars and then thinking about how I can use the offcuts for something later on in the year :)

Happy New Year!

Well, we had a lovely and relaxing beginning to 2012 with our close friends, which I think is one of the nicest things to do.  Although we didn't get to see the fireworks spectacular by the Thames, I don't mind too much, I don't do that well in crowds, and we saw plenty of fireworks from our balcony and even one of those paper lanterns, so that was pretty sweet!

I hope that whatever you got up to you had a lovely evening and enjoyed yourself, and that the hangovers today aren't tooooo bad... wishing all my readers health, wealth and happiness for 2012 and thank you for continuing to nosey around my blog and listen to me ramble on.

Happy New Year!